Hell and Gone Murder Line: Ramona Gregory

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gate to the property was always padlocked. According to an incident report, that afternoon, Jim was checking the south side of Clayton Expressway near Williams Lane when he saw something in the distance. At first he thought it might be a dead animal, but when he got closer, he realized it was not an animal. It was a body. I'm

Catherine Townsend. Over the past eight years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned that there's no such thing as a small town where murder never happens. I have received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If you have a case, she'd let me and my team to look into.

You can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five, or you can send us a message on Instagram at Helen Gonepod. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. The victim was nude, her remains were partially decomposed. She was lying face down in an area of tall grass, weeds and briars. The body was inside the fence line off a fire break. The area around the body had been disturbed and parts

of the body had been consumed by animals. Jim Hannigan called the police at four twenty three pm. The Fort Smith Police Department got that call that there was a nude body lying off the north side of Clayton Expressway, south of the Williams Lane intersection. Jim later told police that he had the only key. Just a note here. Nothing that we've read indicates that police believed that Jim

was involved with Ramona's death in any way. Officer Chuck Warr responded he met Jim out on the expressway and Jim led him to the Padlock gate. From there, they went down the inside of the fence along the firebreak. That was where Officer war saw the body. He immediately contacted Captain Ralph Wood, and pretty soon the entire Major

Crimes unit was on the scene. At that point, police did not know who the victim was, but they could see that the body appeared to be female, that the victim had blonde hair, and that her finger nails were painted red. On her left wrist, she wore a gold chain bracelet. Investigator's searched the area around her body. They found three separate locations where blonde hair was wadded up on the ground, all within about six feet of the body.

They also found an old, weathered key near Clayton Expressway. Now it's not explained in the report what this key went to or whether it could have been one that fit that lock. I'm guessing not since it's not mentioned in the report, but it's an odd coincidence that Jim said he had the only key and another key was found near the body. The coroner, Reverend Parrish, was notified. He came to the scene and immediately pronounced the victim debt.

Police contacted the Medical Examiner's office in Little Rock, and someone from the medical Examiner's office was sent to take possession of the body and the physical evidence. Because it was getting dark fast, police left the scene. They came back the next day to do a more detailed search. They took additional photographs, made a crime scene sketch, and used a metal detector to look for projectiles like bullets

or shell casings. They didn't find any, but the medical examiner later pulled a bullet out of the victim's skull. The me was able to determine that the victim was female and that she had been shot in the head with a twenty five caliber pistol. The bullet was fully intact, good enough for comparison to find possible murder weapons. So now police knew how she had died. The question was who was she and why was she out in that field.

Police started notifying multiple agencies, including the Van Buren Police Department in the Crawford County Sheriff's Office US. Both of those agencies had recent missing persons reports that generally match the body. Detectives obtained files and dental records for two missing women last names listed on the reports as Belle and Hassler, so that they could be forwarded to the

medical examiner. The medical examiner later told investigators that the body was not the missing Hassler woman from Crawford County, and now police had a better and more complete description of the victim. She was a white female around five foot six, about one hundred and thirty pounds, with blonde hair and good teeth. The police got a call from the family of a sixteen year old named Ramona Gregory, who had been missing for weeks. Ramona was from Rowland, Oklahoma,

just across the state line from Fort Smith. She was a ninth grade student at Darby Junior High School. She lived with her parents, Brenda and Raymond Gregory and her sisters, Bridget and Cassie Langley. Her family had reported her missing on February fourth, nineteen ninety, and by the time she was found, decomposition and animal activity had already taken away a lot of evidence that might have told police what

happened during her final hours. On March twenty second, nineteen ninety, after getting info from the Gregory family, the Medical Examiner's Office officially identified the body. They matched fingerprints from the body to a fingerprint card on file for Ramona Gregory. Ramona had apparently been arrested before, and the Fort Smith Police Department's Juvenile Division had photographs, finger prints, and a file on her, so the decomposed body found off Clayton

Expressway was confirmed to be Ramona Gregory. Once investigators had her name, they started trying to reconstruct where she had been, who she had been with, and what happened to her between the day she disappeared and the day when Jim Hannigan found her body behind that lock gate near a fire break. But this wasn't easy because Ramona moved around a lot at that time. Detectives said she was known to be a runaway. She would stay in different places

around Roland and Fort Smith. They were able to identify several hangouts where she went regularly. The main one was Grand Avenue, where she would cruise around and spend time with friends. Ramona had friends and relatives all around, including her sister Cassie in our Coma, Oklahoma, and friends in Van Buren and an area north of US Highway sixty four between Roland and Muldro. Detective J. C. Ryder was

in charge of the case. He told The Times Record that Ramona's only transportation was walking and hitchhiking, and she did a lot of walking around. He said it was not uncommon for her to walk from Roland to Fort Smith and back again. So if Ramona was walking and hitchhiking between Roland, our Coma, Van Buren and Fort Smith,

that may her extremely vulnerable. She was sixteen years old, and if she was walking around and hitching a lot, especially late at night, that would seem to drastically increase the murder suspect pool. In June of nineteen ninety, the Times Record reported the detectives were asking for the public's help. They wanted to fill in the blanks in Ramona's timeline and figure out where she was on the day she disappeared.

Detective j. C Ryder told the newspaper, quote, I'm asking people who remember the girl and last time they saw her, and possibly who she was with. End quote. They wanted to know who had been with Ramona, what she was doing, and what was going on with her life. They wanted to look for any possible motive for murder. Police spoke with Ramona's mother, Brenda Gregory and her sister, Cassie Gregory.

They both told investigators Ramona had left home in the past for a day or two, but they said they reported Ramona missing on February fourth because they said she had been gone for weeks aga that point, and they said she had never been gone for that long before. At the time, Cassie was living at the Westwood Apartments in our Coma, Oklahoma, with her boyfriend, Rodley Michaelmore, her two children, and Ramona. Cassie told police Ramona came in

on what she believed was the Thursday night. Ramona said she was going to roll in, Oklahoma to her aunt's house, which was somewhere that she often stayed over. She said that she wanted to get some clothes eat and shower. Then she said she was going to Fort Smith on

Friday to go out on Grand Avenue. After Ramona failed to come home or contact her, Cassie later talked to their aunt, Susan McGuire, who lived at the Shady Lane apartments in Roland, and Susan told Cassie Ramona had come to her house like she had told Cassie and Brenda she was going to. Susan said Ramona showered and ate and got dressed to go out. Then Ramona left for Grand Avenue on foot. After that, no one in her family heard from her again. That is the last clear

family timeline. The last time Ramona was seen was when she was leaving her aunt's apartment in Roland, walking toward Grand Avenue in Fort Smith. After that she disappeared. But it turned out there were other things that had happened to Ramona in the days before she went missing, including a claim that someone had tried to rape her. Cassie told police that on Monday or Tuesday night, so a couple of days before the last time they saw her, Ramona had come in upset. Ramona said she had been

approached by a man driving a pickup truck. According to Cassie, Ramona told her the man offered Ramona a ride and some crank, then he tried to force himself sexually on her. Ramona said she got away. She described the man as white with short brown hair and a brown mustache, so police had a description of a possible suspect, but Ramona was also reporting troubling encounters in her personal life. Brenda and Cassie also told police Ramona was dating someone. This

guy's name is redacted in the case file. They said Ramona and this boyfriend had often gone to another person's house in our coma. The person's name is also redacted in parts of this file, but the redactions make clear this person they're talking about is Ramona's boyfriend's father. Ramona had told Brenda and Cassie that her boyfriend's dad paid her to do housework, and she also said that he

made sexual advances toward her. According to Brenda and Cassie, at one point, Ramona's boyfriend was in jail, and after he got out, he started coming by their house, asking if they knew where Ramona was or if they had heard from her. They said he had been checking on Ramona's whereabouts. Police also interviewed Ramona's boyfriend. Ramona's boyfriend said Ramona had met an older man who from the redactions it seems like he means his dad at a Halloween

party at the Crossroads Club. Ramona's boyfriend told police. During the time he and Romona were dating, he was in and out of jail, and he was very open about his father and the fact that his dad allegedly made unwanted advances toward Romona. The boyfriend said his father would pick him and Romona up and take them to his house in Arcoma, where the boyfriend said his dad paid them to do work around the house. The boyfriend worked on cars, Ramona would do housework. The boyfriend confirmed what

Cassie told police. He told detectives that Ramona had complained that his father would pinch her, slap her on the butt, and make sexual advances toward her. Then, he described a phone call. He said that while he was in jail, he made a collect call to his father's house because he wanted to talk to Ramona. Ramona got on the phone and told him she was having trouble with his dad. She said he was keeping her drunk all the time

and making sexual advances toward her. According to the boyfriend, Ramona said his father had gotten her drunk, thrown her on a bed, and tried to rape her. She said she was leaving after that. The boyfriend said he never heard from Romona again. When the boyfriend got out of jail, he went to confront his father about these alleged sexual advances toward his girlfriend. He told police, when he got to his dad's house, he saw at least six twenty

five caliber handguns there. Ramona had been shot in the head with a twenty five caliber pistol. The boyfriend said he knew that those guns were stolen, and he was angry with his father, so he called the police to report his dad for the stolen guns. Detectives contacted Detective Bill Hollahan of the Fort Smith Police Department's Criminal Investigation Division. So Detective Hallahan had recently worked a series of burglaries

involving stolen guns from a Fort Smith flea market. Some of those guns had been discovered at a residence in ar Coma, where one of Ramona's acquaintances had been living. One of the guns, a twenty five caliber Sema automatic Raven pistol had been returned to its owner, but police went back to trace that gun. They got it back from its owner, believing that it could be a possible

piece of evidence in Ramona's murder. Police also tracked down another semi automatic pistol that had been recovered in a Texas arrest involving one of the burglary suspects. Both guns were tested and both were eliminated as possible murder weapons.

So police had some disturbing pieces of information. They knew that Ramona had had at least one scary encounter with a man who threatened her, and she was dealing with her boyfriend's father, who, she claimed to multiple people gave her alcohol in drugs and subjected her to alleged attempted sexual assaults. And they had had the twenty five caliber bullet that was in good enough condition to compare, but they didn't have anything more concrete and the guns weren't

a match. And then the police found another major piece of evidence, not at the crime scene, but in an area around Harriet Lane near a railroad. Two men, Mike Walker and Fredman Schell, who were both employees of the Arkansas and Missouri Railroad mainline were cutting right away for the railroad line. Right of way is the strip of land, usually a couple of one hundred feet around the tracks that are owned by the railroad, the part where the

power lines go through. Near the tracks off Harriet Lane, the two men saw clothing a sweater, jeans, underwear, a bra, and boots. Later, they met with two detectives, Detective Scott and Detective Champion. They showed them where the clothing was. They said they had found the clothing on March thirteenth.

It wastographed and bag for testing. When the detectives showed the clothing to Brenda and Cassie, Ramona's mother and sister, the women said that the sweater was Ramona's and that the boots looked like a pair of Ramona often wore boots she had borrowed from a girlfriend. They said the genes also looked like Ramona's. Cassie said that the underwear was hers, she had loaned it to Ramona. Cassie also

said Ramona had a gold plated chain bracelet. There was a bracelet like that on the body, but because of the graphic nature of the crime scene photos, detectives did not show that photo to Ramona's family. They also showed the clothing to Ramona's boyfriend. He also confirmed it was hers. The clothing evidence creates another question. If Ramona's body was found off Clayton Expressway, why were her clothes found near the railroad tracks off Harriet Lane, which was about half

a mile away. Were they dumb there by the killer? Did Ramona leave them there before she died? Did something happen to her there and then later she was moved. The clothing was submitted to rology for analysis, but from the pieces of Ramona's case file that we have, we can't tell whether that testing ever led to any determinations.

Detectives were trying to build a map of Ramona's final days from the memories of people who knew her casually, people who saw her walking or saw her get into cars, or people who saw her at the clubs or in cruising spots. But Ramona was also a teenage runaway, and that label unfortunately affected how the case was understood. In December of nineteen ninety one, the Times Record interviewed a Crawford County Juvenile probation officer name Leanne Cluck about the

number of runaways around the holidays. Cluck said that as of December first, nineteen ninety one, Fort Smith, Arkansas, had one hundred and thirty five runaways. Now, most of those teenagers would eventually make it home safely. Ramona Gregory was one of the ones who did not, and around this time there were several reports of runaways who were murdered in Fort Smith. This included Estella Martin, a fourteen year old from Van Buren, who was also a runaway. Anne

was murdered. Kluck talked about how parents were sometimes reluctant to admit that their children were runaways because they were embarrassed. They worried that people would judge them or assume that they were bad parents. But she stressed this was not the right way to look at things, and that the most important thing was that missing children were reported immediately, because even if a child left home voluntarily, something could happen to them very quickly, something that was not voluntary.

This is exactly the danger at the center of Ramona's case. She lived her life on her own terms, staying with different people and moving around, but at some point something happened to her that she did not choose. Someone shot her in the head stripped her and left her body in a field, and over thirty years later, her killer has still not been found. There is not a lot of information out there about this case. After the initial

flurry of information, the story kind of died out. But after a FOY request, we were able to get Ramona's case file back, and in my opinion, the case file suggests investigators had a lot more to work with than the public may have known. There was the man in the pickup truck who allegedly tried to assault Ramona days before she disappeared. There was the older man in our coma, her boyfriend's dad, who allegedly gave Ramona alcohol, made sexual advances,

and tried to rape her. Police did question Ramona's boyfriend's father, and he took a lot of detector test At first, he told them that the last time he saw Ramona was outside her sister, Cassie's apartment. He said he drove her to his house where she cleaned and then left without incident. He said that any claims that Ramona may have made about sexual advances were absolutely false. Police said they believed that his responses indicated deception, and then he

changed his story. This time he said that he had had a sexual encounter with Ramona, but that it was consensual. He told police that while Ramona was cleaning his house, she walked into the bathroom, took off her bra, and then came up to him while he was sitting in a recliner. Then, he said he kissed her and fondled her breast. He claimed that Ramona said, I'm feeling like a slut because he was too old for her, and that she said, this makes me feel cheap and it's wrong.

After that, the boyfriend's dad claimed he told Ramona to put her bra back on and he drove her home. He continued to insist to police that he never had sex with her or forced her into anything. The boyfriend's father was interrogated two other times and took two more light detector tests concerning Ramona's murder, and according to police reports,

both times, the results indicated deception. In my opinion, his accounts of what Ramona said contradict everything that she told multiple witnesses about her encounters with this man, and yet he was never arrested or charged. Ramona's murder did not happen in a vacuum in the years before and after her disappearance, the Fort Smith area had plenty of other unsolved murders of young women and girls that left the

community with more questions than answers. In the nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties, there were other unsolved murders of young women and girls in the same city where Ramona's body was found. One of those cases was less Hogg. There is not much information about her case out there except that she was a quote runaway who was later found dead. Here's what we know. On November first, nineteen eighty five, Leslie went for a walk to the Bailey

Hill Reservoir. Her body was later found with an open six pack of beer next to her. She had been strangled with shoelaces from her own shoes. Decades later, police have said they still consider Leslie's case active. Some investigators have wondered whether there could have been a serial killer in Fort Smith during that time period. I want to just stress there's no indication that Leslie's and Ramona's case

are connected. I'm bringing it up to emphasize that there were very young runaways disappearing during that time in Arkansas and not really making local or national news. Chris Boyd Senior and J. C Ryder, who also worked on Ramona's case, were detectives with the Major Crimes Unit at the Fort Smith Police Department when Leslie went missing. They were assigned to Leslie's case in the late eighties, when it was

one of the first major cases for that unit. Chris Boyd later said, back in nineteen eighty five, police didn't have the forensic capabilities they have today. Back then, the best investigators could usually hope for was fingerprints or eyewitnesses. J. C Ryder later described Leslie's case as sad, as he said cases like that always are. A lot of people

have the same feelings about Ramona Gregory's case. Ramona's case is from nineteen ninety, right on the edge of when investigators relied almost solely on old school detective work and the beginning of modern forensic testing, and they were trying to solve the murder of a teenager whose final movements were difficult to pin down because she was moving between places, relying on walking and hitchhiking, and spending time with people who were sometimes involved in drugs, stolen property, and guns.

This does not make Ramona responsible for what happened to her, but it does make her vulnerable and it makes the investigation harder. Years after Ramona's death, the case resurfaced through something that looked unrelated, a burglary investigation involving stolen property from salisaf Ford. By nineteen ninety two, detectives were looking at people connected to that burglary. It involved stolen property and tools, possibly including a lawnmower, which appeared on the news.

As detectives interviewed people connected to the stolen property trail, they were pulled back toward Ramona Gregory's murder. That burglary investigation led them into a circle of men who either knew suspects or had heard talk about Romona's case. One of those men was Rodney Sirett. According to police records, Rodney told officers that he had been in the same Crawford County jail cell as a man named Kenneth Dennis. Rodney told police that he had information about Ramona's death.

Rodney claim Kenneth said someone had shot a girl. According to the records, Kenneth said that Ramona was killed because of jealousy involving someone's son, specifically because Ramona was going to marry someone's son. That is a major statement if true, jealousy involving someone's son could point back toward the relationship dynamics. Investigators had already heard about between Ramona's boyfriend, the boyfriend's father, and the father's alleged sexual interest in Ramona. But jailhouse

information is always complicated. People in jail may hear things. They also may exaggerate or trade information they believe will get them a better deal. According to the investigative notes, police interviewed Kenneth Dennis. The file says Dennis talked about stolen guns and people who could sell them. But from the notes we have, that lead did not result in an arrest. It just added another layer to the same unresolved question who killed Ramona Gregory. There are several possible directions.

In the one direction is the stranger dangerly the man in the pickup truck that tried to sexually assault her. She escaped that time, but it's possible if that man saw her again, or if he was connected to where she was walking or hitchhiking, he could be important. The problem is that the description is broad. Ramona described him as a white male with short brown hair, a brown mustache and a pickup truck in that area of Arkansas in nineteen ninety that could describe a lot of men.

Another direction is the older man in our coma, her boyfriend's father. Ramona allegedly told multiple people her boyfriend's father made sexual advances toward her. The boyfriend told police Ramona said his dad had kept her drunk and tried to rape her, and the boyfriend said he saw multiple twenty five caliber guns at his father's house, But the known twenty five caliber guns that the police recovered and tested were eliminated. Now that does not mean that the man

was cleared. It means the specific guns police tested did not fire the bullet recovered from Romona's skull. If there were multiple guns, or if another gun was never recovered, that question is still open. A third direction is the stolen gun and burglary circle. Ramona and the people around her appear to have been connected, either directly or indirectly to people buying and selling stolen merchandise. Police questioned people who knew Ramona and who had been involved in stolen property.

Some of the recovered guns came out of those investigations. These salasov Ford burglary leads that happened much later suggest people in that same circle were talking about Ramona's murder years later, but that does not prove they were involved. It does show that the detectives believe the stolen property and guns network around Ramona were worth exploring. A fourth direction is the possibility that Ramona's death could connect to

some of these other deaths in Fort Smith. As we said before, this is much more speculative because police have wondered whether some of the other cases, like Leslie Hoggs, could involve a serial killer. The circumstances in victimology may overlap in some ways, both young female victims, both in the Fort Smith area, but the method is not the same. There was also another lead. Shortly after Ramona was murdered. Police arrested a man on suspicion of assaulting his wife.

When they did, they found out that he was carrying newspaper clippings of Ramona's murder. He said that he was carrying those clippings because Ramona had been his girlfriend, which police said she had not, so they thought that was strange. Then police talked to Cassie. They found out that both

she and Ramona knew this guy. Cassie said that he had asked Ramona out in the past and that Ramona always said no. Then, on New Year's Eve, after Ramona's murder, Cassie saw this guy at a party and while she was in a bathroom, he grabbed her purse, ransacked it, and stole the newspaper clippings mentioning Ramona, and then left the party with the newspaper clippings. This man's name was also redacted. So who was this guy? Was this just a person with a bizarre fixation, or could this be

a possible suspect? In my opinion, the location where Ramona's body was found would seem to be extremely important here because you have a situation where the gate was locked and there was only one person who had the key. Jim the caretaker, told police that the fire brake was cut months earlier, which would mean that that area was regularly inspected, which would also seem to narrow the window of time when it was possible for Ramona to be

killed and dumped. Was that gate really inaccessible to anyone else or could the killer have had access somehow? Could he have climbed over the fence if the gate was locked to put her there, and if so, why would

he bother to do that? And because Ramona's clothes were found elsewhere, investigators also had to consider multiple scenes the place where the body was found, the railroad track, area where the clothing was found, and wherever Ramona was last alive That could span a massive area including Grand Avenue, Rolling ar Coma, a private house, a vehicle, or somewhere else entirely were all the people named in the reports ever fully ruled out? Are any of them still alive?

A lot of the names in this case report are redacted, but I'm hoping if someone out there is listening, they may recognize the circumstances around this case, and maybe someone who knew Ramona will come forward. Are there surviving witnesses who were teenagers or young adults in Fort Smith, Roland, ar Coma or Van Buren in nineteen ninety who may have known something about this case but who never spoke

to police. It's been thirty six years and police are releasing the case fall even with all of the black lines in it, I really believe that this case can and should be reinvestigated. Ramona was not just a runaway. She was somebody's child and someone got away with killing her, someone who may have gone on to kill again and could still be out there somewhere. So what happens next today? If this case were to be reopened, investigators could start

with the evidence. They could retest Ramona's clothing if it still exists and it's an evidence. They could review the roology testing and see if there is any more more modern testing that could be done, maybe get new DNA

testing to reexamine the hair evidence. They could grab those old school case falls, some written in chicken scratch handwriting, and scrutinize, digitize and compare every single statement and build a better timeline because there are still a lot of gaps of time between February fourth, the last known family sighting, and when Ramona disappeared. They could also retrack every twenty five caliber gun that was mentioned in this case file and look at the men who were connected to them.

Most crucially, they could take second looks at the two men who Ramona was known to have conflicts with shortly before her death. There was the guy in the pickup truck, but in my opinion, even more crucially, her boyfriend's dad deep in the case file. I found another reference to her boyfriend's dad. Someone else told police that they saw Ramona in the parking lot outside her sister's apartment right

before she went missing. Ramona told this person that she was headed to her aunt's house, then to shower and go out from there to Grand Avenue, and Ramona said something else. She said that she was headed to get ten dollars that she was owed for cleaning from her boyfriend's dad. That was the last time that this person vers saw Ramona. In my opinion, police should ask the same question J. C Ryder asked in nineteen ninety, who remembers Ramona Gregory. I'm Katherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone

Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Katherine Townsend and produced by Etily's Perez Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance and Sarah Burns for legal review. Noah Camer mixed and scored this episode. Our theme song is by Bence A Lee. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and L. C. Crowley. Listen to Helen Gone adfree by subscribing to the iHeart True

Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. If you were interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at Helen Gonepod. If you have a case she'd let me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five that six seven eight seven four four six one four five